


eldritch beginnings

by x (ordinary)



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Animal Death, Eldritch, Gen, Hunting, The Fade
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-19
Updated: 2015-09-19
Packaged: 2018-04-21 14:30:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 572
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4832702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ordinary/pseuds/x
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first time Elyse looks down and sees hands that are not her own, she is nine.</p><p>Or: Elyse’s first hunt, and she’s already showing signs of what she will one day become.</p>
            </blockquote>





	eldritch beginnings

**0.**

The first time Elyse looks down and sees hands that are not her own, she is nine. 

 

**i.**

With her child-sized bow drawn taut, Elyse watches her prey with lilac eyes, too young to be anything but  _curious_ at what the outcome will be. It is the first hunt where the responsibility to  _kill_  is hers and hers alone. 

The halla sniffs at the air, aware of the danger but not of how close it lurks. Just a little longer, rumbles the voice behind her, and her father is there to steady a hand at her back, large and splayed between her shoulder blades. He has been a hunter for almost all of his forty years, and now he passes the tradition to her, blood to blood. 

They must wait, but she does not throw a fit.

Elyse has always been a patient girl, when the reward is sweet enough.

 

**ii.**

Her father squeezes her shoulder, signaling that it’s  _time_ , and Elyse smiles, sweet and cherubic. She lets the arrow fly from between gloved, chubby fingers, loosing it into the woods. It whistles softly, and its aim is  _true_. 

(Truer than it should be, for a girl that is but nine, guided by something that is from beyond the veil.)

The arrow quivers between the halla’s ribs, its breath coming in sticky gasps, knees buckling beneath it. He closes the distance between them, dragging Elyse behind him with a vice-grip on her wrist, a furious bundle of rage, locked down quietly as he slits it neck.

 

**iii.**

Her father is lecturing her beneath the roaring of blood in her ears, and she watches its death.

 _Go for the painless kill,_  he says, cleaning the blood off his knife, displeased.  _If I’ve told you once I’ve told you a thousand times. You’ve seen me do it, too. I’ve seen you hit the targets, too, sweetheart. Do better next time. You don’t want it to suffer, do you?_

And she looks apologetically down at her toes, playing a good game of miserable, heart caught in her chest, but not for the right reasons.

 _No_ , she says, hesitant. There’s not a monster in her, not yet, but it creeps in around the edges of her apologetic smile. Elyse licks her lips, the point of her tongue peeking from between the pink, as if tasting the red in the air.  _I’ll do better, next time_.

 

**iv.**

She crouches down to feel the fading heat coming off the halla in waves, and suddenly her small hands are no longer slim and pale, but blackened and clawed. The sky grows green around her, and writhing things unfurl around her feet, black and violet and sanguine, and she knows they are as much a part of her as her own skin and bones.

The fade whispers and crackles with power untapped, but she won’t know it for what it is until her first trip into it as an adult. 

For now, a dozen red eyes blink at her in unison, whispering  _join us_ in an eldritch unison so enchanting. 

And then her father ruffles her hair with a calloused hand, and the sky is amber again, and the air smells of fresh autumnal forest rather than decay and ozone and the deep undersea. 

Elyse looks at her palms, no longer wild and monstrous, and blinks, hungry for more than halla-flesh. She licks at her adult canines, abnormally sharp.


End file.
